Lisbon wants rid of this hated scheme

The bottle-deposit scheme has gone from an annoyance to a political fight. It's Thursday, 17 September. Twenty-seven degrees. Air quality: 57 (Moderate). Here's what you need to know.

🗞️ MOEDAS WANTS VOLTA GONE, THE MINISTER SAYS NO

Lisbon's mayor has called for Portugal's bottle-and-can deposit scheme to be scrapped, and within a day the government had said no. It is the sharpest clash yet over Volta, the system that has divided the city since it launched in April.

Speaking at Lisbon's Municipal Assembly on Tuesday, PSD mayor Carlos Moedas said the scheme, well-intentioned as it was, had created an "unprecedented social drama" in the capital. His complaint is the one you have probably seen with your own eyes: people going through public bins for bottles and cans carrying the Volta symbol, which are worth a 10-cent refund each, and leaving rubbish strewn across the pavement in the process. "An environmental policy should not be a tax, nor should it be a social drama," he said, pointing to France as an example of a country that dropped a similar plan. "It is a good intention. It is a bad result. We do not want it."

The government's answer came the next day, and it was blunt. Environment Minister Maria da Graça Carvalho ruled out scrapping Volta entirely, "that is not on the table," noting that deposit-return schemes are part of EU waste policy, and argued that Moedas has the cause and effect backwards. The bin-rummaging, she said, is "independent of Volta" and rooted in something deeper: "It is related to poverty, to homeless people who look for some way of earning income from these bottles." Her proposed fix is not to end the scheme but to add separate containers where people can leave refundable bottles and cans, so nobody has to dig through general rubbish to find them.

She also came armed with numbers. Volta has taken back around 305 million containers in its first five months, close to five million a day, and is running at a 44% return rate against a government target of 40% by year's end. On the government's terms, it is working.

The public, though, is closer to Moedas. A petition calling for Volta to be suspended has passed 37,000 signatures, well over the 7,500 needed to force a parliamentary debate, and complaints about overflowing bins, litter and the associated rats and cockroaches have made Lisbon the most-complained-about municipality for urban waste.

Bottom line: the scheme is hitting its recycling targets and is not going anywhere, the minister has made that clear. But the mayor has now put his name to abolishing it, a petition is heading for parliament, and the fight over whether Volta is an environmental win or a daily nuisance is only getting louder.

⚡ QUICK HITS

The government has admitted that fuel costs are hurting Portuguese households. Economy Minister Manuel Castro Almeida told a parliamentary committee what drivers and retailers have been saying for weeks: "Portuguese people are facing difficulties because of this extraordinary increase in fuel costs," and, on the wider picture, "inflation is not going well, it should be falling and it is rising." Diesel is the one to watch, sitting near record highs, and it matters even if you do not drive one: almost everything on a supermarket shelf got there on a diesel lorry, so when diesel climbs, the cost steadily follows into your weekly shop. The government's defence is that it is not profiting from the war-driven rises, converting the extra IVA (value-added tax) it collects on pricier fuel into discounts on the ISP (the fuel duty) to cancel it out. Critics are unconvinced: fuel is still 40 to 50 cents a litre cheaper in Spain, IVA is still charged at 23%, and the opposition says the state has raked in over a billion euros regardless. New support is promised for hauliers, farmers and firefighters, but nothing across-the-board for ordinary drivers.

Brazilian visitors are pouring money into Portugal at a record rate. Overnight stays by Brazilian tourists rose 7% in the first half of the year, to 1.18 million, but the revenue they generated jumped 18.4%, an all-time high for the first six months of any year, according to Turismo de Portugal, the national tourism board. Brazil is now firmly one of Portugal's most valuable non-European markets, and the traffic runs both ways: Portugal has overtaken France as the top European source of visitors to Brazil. It is a quiet story of two Portuguese-speaking economies binding closer together, and a rare bit of tourism news that is about spending power rather than sheer numbers.

Chega cried "dictatorship" after parliament blocked its inquiry into Luís Neves. André Ventura's party had pushed for a potestative inquiry, a type of parliamentary investigation an opposition party can trigger by right, into the Interior Minister, and reacted furiously when the mechanism was blocked, with Ventura repeating the word "dictatorship" three times. It is the latest flare-up in the months-long campaign against Neves that has already produced a failed no-confidence motion, and it keeps the temperature high between Chega and the government it usually props up. Whether the theatre changes anything is another matter; so far, none of it has shifted Neves.

PetDoctors Veterinários - An English-Speaking Vet for Your Dog or Cat

Moving to Portugal with a pet comes with a small, nagging worry: what happens when something's wrong and you can't explain it to the vet? PetDoctors Veterinários, with practices in Lisbon and Corroios, handles exactly that. The team runs consultations in English, so you actually understand your pet's diagnosis, treatment and options rather than nodding along and hoping.

It's a full small-animal practice for dogs and cats, not just a translator with a stethoscope. They cover the everyday essentials, vaccinations, health checks and preventive plans, right through to internal medicine and surgery.

They also run in-house blood work, so lab tests are done at the practice and results come back quickly, which means faster diagnoses and quicker decisions when your pet needs them. On top of that there's a dedicated dermatology clinic, genuinely useful if your dog or cat has been battling persistent itching, allergies, recurring ear infections or hair loss, the kind of thing that drags on when nobody gets to the root of it.

Whether you've just arrived and need to set up a vaccination schedule, or you've been here years and want a vet you can actually talk to, they see both Portuguese and international pet owners across Lisbon, Corroios and the surrounding areas.

The goal they set themselves is a simple one: to help your pet live a healthier, happier life, and to give you the information and support to make confident decisions about their care.

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We only partner with businesses we think genuinely help our community. If this is useful to you, or if you know another pet owner who's been putting off finding a vet, every click and every share goes a long way to keeping this newsletter free every morning.

🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

ALFAMA DOCE (ALFAMA)

In a neighbourhood where every second doorway sells a pastel de nata (custard tart) to a passing tour group, Alfama Doce is the one the locals actually queue for. It is a tiny, family-run pastelaria (pastry shop and café) on Rua da Regueira, run by Paula and her team, and it holds a 4.9 rating across thousands of reviews, ranked among the very top of Lisbon's five-thousand-plus restaurants. No frills, no tourist mark-up, just pastries coming out of the oven all day.

The pastéis de nata are the obvious draw, flaky, warm and cheap by central-Lisbon standards. But the thing to try is the pastel de Alfama, the house specialty you will not find elsewhere: almond-topped, with a runny lemon filling. Beyond that there is pão de deus (a soft, coconut-topped sweet roll), bolo de arroz (a Portuguese rice-flour muffin), coffee and fresh orange juice, and the kind of welcome, in English, French, Spanish or Italian, that turns first-timers into daily regulars for the length of their stay.

One thing to know before you go: it is cash only, so come with bills in your pocket or there is conveniently an ATM located right outside the shop if you need it.

→ Find them here ←

Insider tip: go in the morning, when everything is freshest from the oven, and order the pastel de Alfama alongside the usual nata. The almond-and-lemon one is the reason to make the walk rather than grabbing a nata from the first place you pass.

📅 WHAT'S ON

See you tomorrow morning.

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